Physically Unable to Perform: Watching Games at Papa by Papa John's

Jeff: We may have gone over this another time, but when you see the Georgia Dome on TV, does it strike you as a place you might not make it out of alive? Some of the lights are turned off.

David: Arthur Blank is a huge Godfather fan, and he insists that every football game be lit precisely like Don Corleone’s study. And it’s his show, you know? During day games, I think they just open some Venetian blinds.

Jeff: "Listen, if a guy can’t catch a football, he can’t catch a fuckin’ football. Don’t matter that we’ve got 40% of the overheads off." The turf looks like its "fill" is margarita salt. I know some use coconut husks, but Atlanta’s is definitely salt, or ground bones.

David: You can get backs of that mix, which I think they call "Parrothead, at Lowe’s. It’s one of Jimmy Buffett’s less-well-known and more-successful ventures.

Jeff: Matt Ryan’s name conjures a stud whose face was chiseled from marble. Then when you see him, he actually looks like young Jimmy Carter if he was raised on a diet of iceberg lettuce and, well, that’s all. An ROTC-do gooder.

David: He looked great against Green Bay, right until he regressed into country-club-caddie-who-thinks-he’s-in-trouble. Then he got really sullen and sad. I imagine that the coaching staff has to take him aside and be like, "Son, you’re still going to get a tip." Really we should just be grading the collapses.

Jeff: I’d give them a C-. Whereas the Bears right now are getting a power F. "One of these times Jay Cutler will be sacked so hard, he’ll get knocked forward for a first down. And that’s how we will win. And then we can get him a new pancreas."

David: Cutler is doing the best he can with that situation, but his job is basically that of someone who repeatedly has to reach into some razor-lined tube in an attempt to pick up a white-hot piece of metal. Also people are screaming at him and throwing muffins at him while he does it. And he has to wear short sleeves. I know some of this is by design—fewer blockers means more eight-wide sets for Mike Martz—but Cutler really just gets worked over so hard.

David: Some of that is the Lions, though. They look great, no joke. All the receivers on the Lions look like they’re 6’8, and Stafford is pretty terrific. If I expire before my time, I leave you all of my replica football jerseys, except for the Mike McMahon Lions one, which I’d like to be buried in.

Jeff: Did Mike McMahon play more than 11 games?

David: He played them very well. Or, sorry, typo: he played them very frightened. Pretty much anyone who ever played a skill position has a replica jersey for sale on eBay. Often, ridiculous, for like $59.95. But I promise there are Rex Grossman jerseys out there on eBay.

Jeff: I can confirm that no one is shopping for those. Except for a self-described Texans "completist" who also has rare Rosenfels, Gado, and Dayne models under glass.

David: Never worn, pristine. Here’s a Kyle Brady Jags jersey It’s very generously cut. It’s really ideal for turning into an ad-hoc canopy under which you can cook beans on a hibachi. I guess you could do that at the stadium if you wanted, sort of as a tailgate, but it’s really good for that use anywhere. Probably better used near a highway.

Jeff: If Jeremy Shockey had a little more Kyle Brady in him, the world would be a better place. Kyle Brady is going to hold political office one day. Reading his Wikipedia page is certainly entertaining. It says Belichick pursued him with an almost romantic, Moby Dick like-zeal. "You don’t have to decide anything. Just hear me out. Meet me for tapas, and let’s take it from there. I can come pick you up in Bon Jovi’s plane."

Jeff: Does Al Davis dying mean anything to you?

David: The shortest answer is that it means something because I like some authentic crazy-person weirdness in the NFL, and that he was a last and kind of sacred bastion of that.

Jeff: He’s sort of like a Hugh Hefner figure to me. A throwback to an era where people made love on beanbag chairs and ate casserole out of earth-colored Tupperware, while smoking Pall Malls. But maybe more luxurious than that... Obsessed with doing things in his own way even if it means small countries are wiped off the map. "This bathtub is made out of emeralds. That’s how I know it is classy."

David: Definitely. He was certainly alive long enough to experience his own ridiculousness, but maybe lucky enough to live to see a larger societal ridiculousness that makes him look less of a joke. For both Hef and Al Davis. They’re incredibly crass, but the world got way crasser way faster than they did. They couldn’t even have imagined Donald Trump back in the days when Davis and John Madden were routinely in People’s "Sexiest Men Alive" issue.

Jeff: Still I appreciate what the guy did. Even though he was abrasive and maybe told a lot of players he was doing right by them, then paid them in sauerkraut and promises.

David: He was a man out of time. I think right up until he passed away, Al Davis’s TV still only got the Watergate Hearings and Laugh-In. And he hated Laugh-In because he thinks Henry Gibson slighted him at a party Fred Biletnikoff threw. So he’s dedicated himself for years to trying to get Laugh-In canceled.

Jeff: I could see him getting Raiders fans to start writing letters. But I think he was even more of a vampire than that. "Freddie, you guys do your humor shit. Send Vicki the bill. Knock yourselves out, I’ve got to go erase someone."

David: I wrote this in my Vice column, but he was basically end-stage Junior Soprano by the end, shuffling around in a sweat suit and surreptitiously mumbling assassination orders into a sweet potato, then hanging it up and being like "oh, nothing, nothing." That said, Darren McFadden is really good, and that team looks kind of decent.

David: The Eagles collapse is like a persistent bathroom-related emergency that occurs at a Midwestern airport. I guess all the mistakes are Andy Reid’s fault. Probably to a great degree. But I just like the NFL more with him in it. He’s so soothing and gloomy. He’s like a sad walrus from a children’s book. "I’m down in the dumps because no one listens to me."

Jeff: He needs to move on. If only to return more powerful, and also satiated from a cream of something soup served from a bread bowl. Okay, I am getting tired of seeing the Detroit coach’s Knockout Punch. Andy Reid is like a kid with an awesome train set who threw away the instructions. Or sat on them.

David: He really does need to just be put to bed early. Reid, I mean.

Jeff: That sounds like an XTC song or something. "Making Plans for Nigel." Andy needs to go to bed. The glum walrus who couldn’t fall asleep. All he needs now is a toothache and to sail away on a ship made from a giant carrot.

Jeff: I know. I am dying for it. There might be nothing sadder than NBC’s NFL music, especially when the game is over. That sort of trumpet thingy. Then they show the nighttime skyline of whatever city they’re in, and you know you have to get to work the next morning, and the game actually wasn’t that great. And it is midnight. It’s almost as depressing as the music from the old sitcom Taxi or Who’s the Boss? both of which are prescription-strength downers.

David: Are you bullish on Jackie Battle?

Jeff: I like that he has been around 5 years and has like 18 carries.

David: I think a lot of different people will take hand-offs for the Chiefs this year—for starters, Barry Word, Lance Okoye (a cousin) and former Sen. Sam Brownback—but none will have tougher names.

Jeff: I have to say I was rooting for Curtis Painter. He looked good, even though Dallas Clark refused to take the oven mitts off of his hands.

David: When you say "looked good" you mean that he looked like Meghan McCain playing Spicoli in a summer stock version of Fast Times at Ridgemont High? The Colts do look better with him on the field, which is kind of sad for Kerry Collins. Collins at least looks like a quarterback, or a seen-it-all tavern owner. Painter looks like a guy who is constantly telling friends he came up with an awesome idea for a new solar-powered car-detailing shop, and then the next day he gets arrested for being discovered, nude and quite asleep, on a surfboard in a neighbor’s pool.

Jeff: Kerry Collins was like an angry grandpa on the sidelines.

David: Seethingly crunching on Werther’s butterscotches.

Jeff: Speaking of angry grandpas, the Tom Coughlin ride has no lines, right now. No waiting. Hop aboard.

David: The Seahawks won! You would’ve made money on that bet.

Jeff: I imagine Coughlin took the blame. He has in the past. "I really just forgot to prepare these guys. Again." And subsequently we were beaten by an NAIA team.

David: You can never underestimate what might happen when Eli Manning goes into open-mouthed-gawp mode. But Coughlin’s rage-unto-tears face definitely brought back some memories for Giants fans. I imagine he’s drinking a room-temp cup of apple cider vinegar right now and very calmly, very angrily, watching game tape.

David: The Bucs getting beat like they did really raises the possibility that the 49ers are very good. The Rams however, have put in for another bye week. "We just came back to a totally full inbox, and I’m not sure we’re ready to totally quite get beaten by 35 points against Green Bay. Just, you know, bandwith-wise."

Jeff: The Bills have made Brady and now Vick each throw, what 4 interceptions? Is their D that good?

David: No, it’s terrible. They get a lot of takeovers and give up 500 yards of offense every game. I don’t know how long they can go on winning like this, but I am enjoying it. The Bills are just going to win a lot of games 31-28 and try to be okay about it.

Jeff: Did you see any Tebow highlights? I saw him with his helmet off and the beard and he kind of looks like a 3:1 model of Bon Iver.

David: I did. There are so many positions he would excel at that are not quarterback. But I do like his blissed-out Easter Island-size head. Kyle Orton after the game looked like an olive loaf in a wig and a fake beard.

Jeff: I caught that. In his long sideline jacket, with his posture, he looked like something out of the video game Burger Time . The hot dog maybe.

David: What do you think would happen if they handed the job to Tebow? Would all true believers be raptured up to heaven and the rest of the NFL would endure the Tribulation Times? Would Tebow complete 40 percent of his passes and play through two aneurysms? I just bid on a Tyler Thigpen replica jersey. I need not to be on eBay.

Jeff: I hope they start Tebow. He should actually be playing for the Bears. It would make a lot of sense.

Jeff: I am stealing this from a friend’s status update: "Wendy’s marketing guy: ’We’ll call it Dave’s Hot n Juicy!’ Wendy’s ad guy: ’And we’ll have his daughter tell people about it!’" I saw this ad yesterday. Adult "Wendy" has some how emerged from Dave Thomas’s sick dungeon/test kitchen.

David: I don’t like the firemen flirting with her over video-chat. Trying to get Wendy to come down to the firehouse because of how "me and the boys" like their depressing chicken sandwiches. I imagine those guys on Chatroulette, asking the Hamburglar if it’s cool if they lower their pants. "Not off, just lower. Just for comfort. That cool?"

Jeff: Oh these are new. Now there’s a real lady, an actual Wendy. God, the Bears. "Two Drops for Sanzenbacher ," I saw them at the 7th Street Entry in 1986 opening for Big Trouble House.

David: "At Wendy’s, we’re about telling stories, and making sure that our bacon is served "chew-style" at 77 degrees..." I’d like it if he hosted a PBS show called Sanzenbacher Tonight. He interviews Dan Hampton about types of meat.

Jeff: Jim Schwartz... not to beat a dead horse, but he looks like Papa John’s younger bro.

David: I wonder if there really is a younger Schnatter. Trying to score free meals at different Papa John’s across the country. Showing up and being like "Better ingredients, better pizza everybody. Can I have a Pepsi please?" And the staff is like "Sure, once you show that you can throw as tight a spiral as the real Papa John Schnatter. Danny, run a go-route."

David: We’ve talked about how he should open a series of sit-down, up-market sports-and-pizza places? I like Papa by Papa John’s. Big TVs always playing Conference USA football games. They’ve got the MLB season ticket, but the only teams that are ever on are the White Sox and Reds. And on NFL Sundays it’s really on. Talking about Jeff George cameos. Jake Plummer tending bar. Cubes of "real pepperoni" on toothpicks being passed around the room.

Jeff: "Wild" by Buffalo Wild Wings. That’s an upmarket strip club where the women only wear sauce holsters and cowboy hats. I’ve spent several late nights at "HARD" by Hardee’s in Elko, Nevada.

David: Real deep-bench backups should open restaurants and actually go watch the games there in uniform on Sundays. They just get beeped—like with one of those Panera beepers—if they’re needed. Otherwise, you can find Charlie Batch at Small Batch Bourbon Bar and Grill. He’s back behind the bar correcting people. "That’s not peaty, that’s earthy."

Jeff: Brady Quinn’s "The Senator." It is in an old train car and he makes speeches off the back of it.

David: They only serve popovers and a dish called "old roast."

_Jeff Johnson whines almost hourly here, and is cruel to sportscards here and here. _

David Roth co-writes the Wall Street Journal_’s Daily Fix blog, writes the sports column "The Mercy Rule" at Vice.com, and writes regularly for The Awl, among other places. He tweets here._

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (effective 1/4/2014) and Privacy Policy (effective 1/4/2014). GQ may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with prior written permission of Condé Nast.